The man behind the first user-friendly Linux distribution now seeks to produce a free-as-you-want-it-to-be Android phone that respects user rights.

Are you ready for a new operating system for your Android phone? An operating system that’s totally free and thats main purpose isn’t to get you to consume? How about an operating system that, although based on Android, brings to the table some of the best aspects of Linux — like (eventually) it’s own repository of apps? Well, get ready, Gaël Duval is working to bring eelo to the table.

If Duval’s name seems familiar to you, it should. He’s the guy who in 1998 founded Mandrake, the distro that brought ease-of-use to the Linux table long before there was a Ubuntu. Mandrake made installing Linux easy in an age when you had to be something akin to a rocket scientist to get Linux up and running. It also brought graphical point and click configuration tools into play. New-to-Linux users no longer had to be command line whizzes to configure their systems.

Although MandrakeSoft, the company behind Mandrake (later called Mandriva because of both a trademark dispute revolving around the “Mandrake the Magician” newspaper comic strip and a merging of the distro with Connectiva), folded in 2011, the genes of the distro are still with us. PCLinuxOS, which once spent time near the top of the DistroWatch chart, started life as a Mandrake clone. The community-based distro Mageia unabashedly carries on the Mandrake mantle, complete with updated versions of the Drake configuration tools.

But as the Monkees once said, “that was then, this is now.”

In a move that most folks saw, at the very least, as wrong, Duval was forced out at the company he founded in 2006. The same year he co-founded the open source virtual desktop company, Ulteo, where he served as president and CTO until moving on in 2014. Since 2015 he’s been CEO at consulting firm Cleus, which he also founded, and since 2016 he’s been CTO at NFactory, something of a venture capital incubator, that he cofounded.

Right now, he’s working to get eelo off the ground.

In the first of a series of blog posts he began on November 29 announcing the eelo project, Duval explains that he’s starting with an existing open source version of the Android phone operating system, LineageOS. Although some might prefer a mobile operating system based on GNU/Linux, there are plenty of good reasons to chose Android as a starting point. For one thing, it will be a lot less work. Android is already optimized to work well on ARM-based mobile devices and to accommodate small screen sizes.

“[T]he core of AOSP/LineageOS is usable, and performing well, but it’s not good enough for my needs: the design is not very attractive and there are tons of micro-details that can be showstoppers for a regular user. Also, unless you are a geek, LineageOS is not realistically usable if you don’t want Google inside.”

The project is already off to a good running start. Duval and his team, which includes Hathibelagal Ashraff as lead developer and Rhandros Dembicky as “artist-in-chief,” have already designed a replacement for the LineageOS launcher, which the project is calling BlissLauncher “just because it’s a great launcher.” They’ve also developed a new notification system and unlock screen.

Eelo BlissLauncher.

eelo notification system.

Next up is to get rid of Google, which is no easy task since Google in imprinted all over Android’s DNA.

Why get rid of Google? Do you have to ask?

“[W]hat we want is not only something good-looking, attractive and easy to use. We want more privacy! And Google services are not compatible with my idea of privacy.

“Therefore, we don’t want Google Services. We don’t want Google play store. And we probably don’t want most of Google apps such as Calendar, Email etc.

“Also, we probably don’t want Facebook either and some other so-called ‘free’ services. This will be user’s choice to install them or not. I know that we cannot change the world in one iteration, this will be step by step.

“Each of this point will need to be addressed in eelo. We will need an independent application repository, an independent and secure email provider, an independent online drive, online office services…”

Why a repository? Again, do you have to ask? Have you ever looked around on Google Play and tried to understand what app was open source, what was freeware, what was trying to steal your data and what was wanting to track you while servings ads. And while there are alternatives to Google’s little store, all of them come with either limitations or problems that could be deal breakers.

“I think we’d need an “eelo store” that would deliver both:

official free applications like APKPure

open source applications like in F-Droid

All that into a single, appealing and fast application, where users could check easily if an app is open source or not, where users could evaluate the application level of privacy, and where users could be able to report some scam issues. We definitely need to add this to the eelo roadmap.”

There is also the need to remove apps that are overly dependent on Google’s infrastructure, especially “Google Services,” a non-open source service that must be installed to use the Play Store. With the “eelo store,” that would be no great loss, except that Google Services provides some services that are necessary for some popular apps. For example, the GPS apps people use to find their way around town would seem to rely on the infrastructure.

Luckily, there is MicroG, an open source alternative to Google Services what will most likely be integrated into eelo. As will Magisk, another open source project to handle issues from apps that look to Google’s SafetyNet Attestation API to determine if an app is installable on a device. Among other things, the API doesn’t particularly like rooted devices and might prevent some apps from being installed on them.

Nextcloud client on eelo.

Doing away with Google applications is also doable. For search there are DuckDuckGo, Qwant and the not-yet-ready-for-prime-time alternative, CommonSearch. For calendaring, emailing, word processing and the like, Duval and his team have been looking at OpenStreetMaps, Collabora, OnlyOffice, ownCloud and NextCloud. So far, DuckDuckGo, OpenStreetMaps, OnlyOffice and Nextcloud are considered the defaults.

Obviously, a project of this magnitude isn’t going to be cheap to develop and the good news is that eelo isn’t going to die on the vine. On December 21, Duval notified FOSS Force that eelo had started a Kickstarter campaign, seeking to raise $29,674 (or €25,000) in an all-or-nothing campaign, meaning that it the funding goal wasn’t reached, eelo takes nothing.

At press time, with 24 days left in the campaign, eelo has passed its goal, with $33,765 pledged so far.

More money would be better, however. Details on how the money will be spent, including how it will be spent in excess of the minimum goal, are available on the project’s Kickstarter page. If you have a few extra bucks in your pocket and you’re tired of turning your phone off at night or speaking in whispered tones when it’s on because you don’t trust it, you might want to consider making a small donation.

But if you’re good with living in an Orwellian world, by all means, keep your money and continue to use your off-the-shelf Android phone.

]]>https://fossforce.com/2017/12/eelo-gael-duvals-open-source-privacy-respecting-android-clone/feed/81665533‘Linux Journal’ Sails Into the Sunsethttps://fossforce.com/2017/12/linux-journal-sails-sunset/
https://fossforce.com/2017/12/linux-journal-sails-sunset/#commentsMon, 04 Dec 2017 00:34:59 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1662342Part of the Linux culture for nearly as long as Linux itself, Linux Journal has announced that its November edition was its last. [...]

Part of the Linux culture for nearly as long as Linux itself, Linux Journal has announced that its November edition was its last.

Linux Journal is no more. On Friday, publisher Carlie Fairchild wrote that unless “a savior” rides in to save the day, the magazine born in 1994, just two years after Linus Torvalds posted that he was working on an operating system, has already released its last issue.

This is a publication that’s been with us since before the data center discovered the little operating system that can and before the internet forever changed the publishing industry. Linux Journal started its life printed on dead trees, and until relatively recently was delivered to subscribers’ homes by mail or purchased by non-subscribers at the local newsstand.

It started in a time when “open source” was not yet a term. Linux and the GNU stack were “free software,” with the mantra “free as in speech, not as in beer” oft repeated lest anyone confuse software licensed under the GPL with “freeware.”

“It looks like we’re at the end, folks,” Fairchild wrote in the Journal’s funeral notice. “If all goes according to a plan we’d rather not have, the November issue of Linux Journal was our last.”

The problem, of course, is money — or the lack of it — a commodity that she admits has always been in short supply at a publication that “got to be good at flying close to the ground for a long time.” The lack of money, she points out, was made worse by the Google supported modern advertising model in which advertisers no longer support publications “because they value its brand and readers.”

“[T]he advertising world we have today would rather chase eyeballs, preferably by planting tracking beacons in readers’ browsers and zapping them with ads anywhere those readers show up,” she said.

Finances are so bad that current subscribers won’t be getting a refund, although Linux Pro Magazine is picking up some of the slack by offering LJ subscribers six free issues of their magazine. In addition, Fairchild said, “We also just finished up our 2017 archive today, which includes every issue we’ve ever published, including the first and last ones. Normally we sell that for $25, but obviously subscribers will get it for no cost.” She said subscribers will receive an email about both offers.

“We’ve won on so many fronts, but we’ve also lost our way,” he wrote. “It would have been unthinkable and scandalous even a decade ago for a presenter at a Linux conference to use Powerpoint on Windows, but you only have to count the Macbooks at modern Linux conferences (even among the presenters!) to see how many in the community have lost the very passion for and principles around open source software that drove Linux’s success.

“A vendor who dared to ship their Linux applications as binaries without source code used to get the wrath of the community but these days everyone’s pockets are full of proprietary apps that we justify because they sit on top of a bit of open source software at the bottom of the stack. We used to rail against proprietary protocols and push for open standards but today while Linux dominates the cloud, everyone interacts with it through layers of closed and proprietary APIs.”

Rankin makes a good point, which suggests another reason behind the journal’s demise might be that time and history have left it behind. That’s a sobering thought to those of us who adopted Linux not merely for technical reasons, but because we believed the free software FOSS model essential to the future of data technology. As recently as a decade ago we seemed the be the majority of Linux users, even when including commercial users. Today we appear to be a small minority.

On Saturday Noah Meyerhans, a Linux systems engineer for Amazon Web Services, wrote a farewell blog to Linux Journal in which he noted the importance the magazine had in his life during the late 90s when he had been a college student pursuing a computer science degree. Like Rankin, he notes that times have changed, but he prefers to see gains instead of losses. From his vantage in the commercial world, Linux and open source are clear winners. In this sense, he represents the modern paradigm, in which open source is seen mostly as an efficient way of developing software.

“It’s been a long time since I paid attention to Linux Journal, so from a practical point of view I can’t honestly say that I’ll miss it,” he wrote. “I appreciate the role it played in my growth, but there are so many options for young people today entering the Linux/free software communities that it appears that the role is no longer needed. Still, the termination of this magazine is a permanent thing, and I can’t help but worry that there’s somebody out there who might thrive in the free software community if only they had the right door open before them.”

]]>https://fossforce.com/2017/12/linux-journal-sails-sunset/feed/81662342SCO, the Not-Walking Dead, Returnshttps://fossforce.com/2017/10/sco-not-walking-dead-returns/
https://fossforce.com/2017/10/sco-not-walking-dead-returns/#commentsTue, 31 Oct 2017 00:39:01 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1656999It appears that the once cancelled SCO Show has again been rebooted after a federal judge okays an appeal. [...]

It appears that the once cancelled SCO Show has again been rebooted after a federal judge okays an appeal.

Wasn’t there a Bond film called “Live to Die Another Day.” Even if there wasn’t, that applies here.

When last we talked about SCO, in March, 2016, we told you this might happen, although Judge David Nuffer had all but put a bullet through the already dead and bankrupt company’s brain (there’s an oxymoron if ever I wrote one) on February 29, 2016. But exactly a month after the judge’s ruling, the company had somehow managed to scrape together enough spare change to pay the filing fee for an appeal. Today, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that that the appeal could go on, on a claim of misappropriation, but upheld Judge Nuffer’s other two orders.

SCO, of course, is the Utah based company, once part of the Canopy Group, which sued IBM for $1 billion in 2003, claiming that IBM had purloined code from Unix and contributed it to Linux. SCO’s case against IBM was eventually rendered moot when Novell proved that it owned the Unix copyrights that SCO was claiming.

In the media circus which surrounded the story in the period immediately following SCO’s initial claim, SCO produced code at a press conference that they claimed to be a line by line copy of Unix code. It was — but it was no smoking gun. The code also belonged to BSD and was available under the open source BSD license, meaning Linux developers were fully within their rights to use it.

So what is this whole misappropriation angle all about? As Ars Technica explains it, it’s all about a Unix operating system that never saw the light of day:

“In essence, SCO has argued that IBM essentially stole, or misappropriated, its proprietary code (known as UnixWare System Release 4, or SVr4) in the May 4, 2001 release of the ‘Monterey operating system,’ a new version of UNIX designed for IBM’s ‘Power’ processors. However, this Monterey OS was incomplete, as it lacked a compiler.”

And I’ll let the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals give you what Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story”:

“IBM released for general distribution a version of its own proprietary AIX for Power product that included the code. SCO thus argues that IBM released a ‘sham’ version of the Monterey system in order to legitimize its own general distribution of the AIX for Power product containing Santa Cruz’s code. (Aplt. Br. 2, 13.) This is the essence of misappropriation claim.”

]]>https://fossforce.com/2017/10/sco-not-walking-dead-returns/feed/71656999The DMCA as Ransomwarehttps://fossforce.com/2017/10/dmca-ransomware/
https://fossforce.com/2017/10/dmca-ransomware/#commentsFri, 27 Oct 2017 13:32:15 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1656503Actually, the incident reads more like vandalism than ransomware, but it still illustrates that the DMCA is bad law and still needs to be changed. [...]

Actually, the incident reads more like vandalism than ransomware, but it still illustrates that the DMCA is bad law.

I’ll betcha never figured that one of the things you could do with a DMCA take down notice was use it as ransomware. In a case that proves that if you write bad law it’ll be exploited in more ways than you can imagine, that’s now been done. Forget the record and movie industries moves to take down innocent YouTube posts by misidentifying content as infringing — or misunderstanding fair use.

Here’s a case that proves that a script kiddie doesn’t need to go traveling the dark web to spend tiny pieces of a bitcoin for ransomware software. He or she can launch a ransomware attack with no software at all.

There’s no evidence that this has actually been monetized — it most likely hasn’t — but it exists as what I’ll call an incomplete proof of concept.

On Wednesday, Mike Masnick reported on Techdirt that musician/composer Keitaro Ujile, who posts his music all over the web under the handle Ujico/Snail’s House (he has 73,000 subscribers on YouTube), had a couple of his videos removed after a copyright claim by a user aptly named Lazy Channel.

Nothing new about that, it happens all the time, right? The new twist that doesn’t happen all the time is what appears to be a veiled ransom note sent to Ujile after YouTube removed the videos.

Hey ! How’re you doing ! As you know 2 videos on your channel has disappear !
In the case you don’t know that strike can’t retract by youtube if no because of me !
Only me cant retract that strike ! So if you interesting I have a request for you ! Be ready and if you don’t ! Good by all social media ! Hope you will reply soon
Kinds Regards

This is all silliness of course. As I said, the “proof of concept” is incomplete. There’s no evidence that Ujile even replied to Lazy Channel’s message, much less that he paid any ransom. Indeed, it’s doubtful there’s any money to be made from using the DMCA to take down content on social sites and then demanding a ransom.

Silliness but still worrisome.

It does illustrate just how bad a law the DMCA is. Anyone, anytime can have your content removed from any social site — even from a WordPress or Blogger hosted blog — just by claiming copyright infringement without offering proof. A law, I might add, written with the purpose of circumventing due process.

But given the current political climate in the US, it’ll be a long time before this issue is addressed.

Why should you let Microsoft ruin an otherwise perfect day?

Roblimo’s Hideaway

When I was younger, I got together with friends now and then for an evening of drinking beer and discussing the perfidy of Microsoft and just how bad Windows was technically, especially considering the endless amount of R&D money poured into it.

Nowadays I am tired of hating, and if I decide to take it up again as a hobby I can think of many better targets for my bile than Microsoft. Really. Certain terrorist groups, American politicians we won’t name here, and N. Korean dictators are all worse than Microsoft when it comes to pure “ruin the world” evil. Even worse, Bill Gates has gone from exploiter and astroturfer-in-chief to (possibly) the most generous philanthropist in history.

That depends on how long a memory you have, and mine can go to the moon and back, no problem, so Microsoft astroturf makes me madder today than it did when it was fresh because it was the original “fake news” that started chipping away at people’s trust in American journalism — and you know where that led.

But I don’t think anyone at Microsoft anticipated the 2016/2017 political scene back when they started down the highway to astroturf. They just wanted people to believe Windows was more reliable than it really was, and that Microsoft was a benevolent uncle of a company, not a greedy, grasping corporate monster.

And then something amazing happened…

Windows kept some of its worst malignancies intact, including its need to be rebooted half a dozen times on every install, but the past few versions have been fairly stable. I have Windows and Linux running side-by-side on my desk, and I can’t say that I notice the old Windows/Linux pattern, where Windows crashes at least once a day while Linux just goes (as the song says) “on and on…”

I personally attribute this improvement in Windows to Linux. All that good stuff about competition, you know. So yes, every Windows user should say “thank you” to every Linux developer. It won’t happen, but I’ve long thought it should.

Anyway, Linux and Windows are both far more usable by ordinary people than either one was 10 years ago. So why should I hate Windows or Microsoft? It doesn’t do any good.

Besides, I now do nearly half of my “computing” in Android. Should I start hating Android now?

I don’t think so. Aside from anything else, I’m just too old to waste my time hating — although if you want to hate Microsoft a little for me, purely for old time’s sake, I won’t get in your way.

Actually, FOSS Force had nothing whatsoever to do with SUSE pulling the video, but the headline piqued your interest, didn’t it?

The Every-Other-Monday Column

Sometimes the best laid plans…

A week ago Sunday I wrote and scheduled an article to be published last Tuesday. In it, I poked fun a little fun at SUSE, while giving a thumbs up to what I thought was a very well executed — and funny — parody of “Game of Thrones.” It was also very clever, insofar as it managed to paint rival Red Hat in a less-than-open light, without ever mentioning the company by name. In the parody, the not-so-open guys all wore red hats.

Those of you who’ve seen the video, however, definitely didn’t see it from the link here on FOSS Force. Lo! and behold, by the time the article and link went live, SUSE had pulled the promotional piece, so a click on it only resulted a screen full of snow (I’m linking to the word “snow” for those of you unfamiliar with the wonders and lingo of analog TV) with the words “this video is unavailable” displayed in that exact order.

Hmmm…so SUSE pulled the video without explanation. What they didn’t pull, however, was a video about the video, which I’m presenting here so you can get a weak inkling of what you missed.

So, if the Game of Thrones parody was as good as I say, then why did SUSE pull it? Who knows? But in the interest of driving insane traffic to FOSS Force, I’ve come up with a list of possible reasons.

The video wasn’t as good as I thought: This is a distinct possibility. After all, I’m the only person alive who sees a certain genius in Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” According to FOSS Force reader T. Huator, who replied in the comments to the first article, SUSE’s parody sucked raw eggs:

Saw the video before it came down. Probably the worst video they’ve done — it just wasn’t funny and makes them seem jealous of Red Hat.

Unless I am missing it, shouldn’t SUSE want MORE open source out there? Why is more open source their “enemy”? Doesn’t make any sense, but sure does make them look desperate.

Maybe Ms (or Mr.) Huator did miss the point. It seemed to me that the whole purpose of the parody was for it to serve as a commercial touting SUSE’s openness. The video, if I’m remembering correctly, seemed to be saying, if I may be allowed to paraphrase the sitting president of the United States (I’ve linked to a definition of paraphrase for the benefit of said president): “Nobody is more open than SUSE.”

Is this claim true? Of course not. This is a commercial fer chrissakes! You’re supposed to exaggerate your pluses and claim to be a country mile — or a couple of country kilometers — better than your competition. If I’m not mistaken, I think that in the US, that’s the law.

It was pulled at the advice of SUSE’s legal team: This is another distinct possibility. Maybe SUSE’s crackpot legal eagles looked at the video and had the following conversation with the SUSE’s brass:

Legal Eagles: You can’t release that.

Brass: Why not.

Legal Eagles: Because it isn’t true. SUSE isn’t the most open Linux distro on the face of the earth.

Brass: It doesn’t say “face of the earth.” What we’re saying is that we’re the most open distro in all of Germany. Well, maybe in all of Nuremberg. Maybe.

Legal Eagles: What about that deal we made with Microsoft a while back. The one that gave us and our users exclusive patent protection — in violation of the GPL?

Brass: Oh, that little thing. We haven’t done that since Microsoft withdrew the protection. Besides, that was long ago.

Legal Eagles: Not long enough. FOSS advocates have the memory of elephants.

Maybe Red Hat threatened to sue: As odd as it may seem to mention Nuremberg in an article that contains a mention of courtroom drama, that’s another distinct possibility. What if the good folks in Raleigh have no sense of humor? What if, despite the fact there’s no mention of Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst and his evil minions (calm down Jim, I’m only using “evil” for the sake of this argument — I actually have fondness for you folks) decided to unleash (again, quoting a sitting president) “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against SUSE? In a legal battle, Red Hat’s two-going-on-three billion dollars in annual revenue would definitely go a lot further than the quarter of a billion or so that SUSE takes in annually. In other words, in a court of law, Red Hat probably wins if it sues.

But how would they do in the court of public opinion? Therein lies a cautionary tale. As it happens, I have some public opinion court case law to cite — complete with evidence that I’ll be introducing as “Exhibit A” and “Exhibit B,” because that’s what they call evidence on the People’s Court, which is good enough for me.

Back in 1982, McDonald’s sued Burger King. This happened after Burger King became the first burger joint in the good ol’ US of A to run a negative television advertising campaign mentioning another burger joint by name. McDonalds didn’t like it and sued.

At this point I’ll enter the offending ad into evidence as Exhibit A. Oh, the jury is instructed to ignore the reference to 1981 in the label to this YouTube video. To paraphrase Bill O’Reilly, “I’ve done the math.” The commercial ran in early fall, 1982. And unlike O’Reilly, I really have done the math:

Not only did McDonald’s sue Burger King, they sued the adorable little five year old girl (who, as you might have noticed, turns out to be Sarah Michelle Gellar, long before she developed the…er, attributes…to become “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). It was also reported that they banned the young Ms Gellar for life from entering any McDonald’s. The later might not have been true — that’s still open for debate — but it didn’t matter because the public thought it was true and that Ronald McDonald was bullying a poor, sweet innocent child for only wanting a bigger burger.

Long and short of it? Within months and before the end of the year, Burger King settled and pushed some poker chips across the table for Mickey Dee to cash-in. How much money? According to word-on-the-street — always a most accurate source for facts and figures — not nearly as much as the extra business the Home of the Whopper picked-up from the ad campaign.

So, who was the real winner? I’ll let you, the jury, decide, after watching Exhibit B, a video of a Christmas ad — again with Buffy Sarah Michelle Gellar — that Burger King started running almost immediately after settling with McDonald’s.

McDonald’s didn’t sue for being wished a merry Christmas — but, dollars-to-doughnuts, they thought about it.

]]>https://fossforce.com/2017/09/suse-pulls-game-of-thrones-parody-from-youtube-to-foil-foss-force/feed/41648217SUSE Vs Funny People Wearing Red Hatshttps://fossforce.com/2017/08/1647351/
https://fossforce.com/2017/08/1647351/#commentsTue, 29 Aug 2017 04:05:03 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1647351Watching this video, you might be excused for thinking you're watching a trailer for a new Netflix original which looks suspiciously like "Game of Thrones." To paraphrase an old Dodge commercial: "You can tell they're bad guys because they all wear Red Hats." [...]

Watching this video from SUSE, you might be excused for thinking you’re watching a trailer for a new Netflix original which looks suspiciously like “Game of Thrones.” To paraphrase an old Dodge commercial: “You can tell they’re bad guys because they all wear Red Hats.”

Okay, it’s a funny little five minute parody of House of Thrones. But it looks to me as if SUSE has thrown down the gauntlet and is challenging Red Hat…or a bunch of medieval guys wearing red hats…to who knows what. Are the gals and guys in Germany growing a little tired of being the perennial second fiddle — or now third fiddle now that Ubuntu is in server rooms everywhere, especially in Amazon’s cloud.

According to this, SUSE is ready to ascend to the royal throne and take a seat at the right hand of Jim Zemlin. And while watching this, I was prepared to believe that they can do it and that that the Fedora company’s days are numbered. As soon as the video ended, however, I was returned to the real world where making a really cool video is something completely different from developing, maintaining, and marketing a complete enterprise solutions stack.

I’ve got to give it to them, though. They dream big. And vividly. May their dreams come through.

]]>https://fossforce.com/2017/08/1647351/feed/111647351Wanted: GNU Project Maintainers — Part 2https://fossforce.com/2017/08/wanted-gnu-project-maintainers-part-2/
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 04:05:18 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1647291Want to use your skills to aid in the development and maintenance of GNU projects? Here are four more projects that could use your help. [...]

Want to use your skills to aid in the development and maintenance of GNU projects? Here are four more projects that could use your help.

A screenshot from XBoard, an app for playing chess and other chess-like board games. (Photo credit: GNU.org)

Carter’s Corner

This article is a continuation of my last article on GNU projects that are in current need of maintainers. When I first read about the projects GNU needed help with, I was drawn to Gnubik from my own personal love of Rubik’s Cube puzzles. I ended up liking the program and wanted to help so I reached out to the maintainer, who replied back asking about my background and letting me know where help was needed at if I was still interested. Since then, I’ve slowly been helping out where I could and enjoying learning more about the code behind the program. I’m hoping that by writing about these projects, someone will have the time and skill set to help out that wasn’t aware of these projects. I also hope that even if people can’t help out they will download the software, try them out and maybe end up like me.

Gnubik: This GNU project brings the classic Rubik’s Cube to life on your GNU/Linux machine. Written in C and Guile, Gnubik also leverages OpenGL. If you are looking to learn more about computer graphics or how OpenGL works, I encourage you to reach out to John Darrington, who is the current maintainer of Gnubik. Some other cool features of Gnubik is that it supports cubes of any size, can use images or custom colors for the sides of a given cube, users can watch the cube solve itself, and you can record and playback your moves for a given sequence of moves. There is only one email for Gnubik that is used for all aspects of Gnubik, so if you are interested and want to help out, email bug-gnubik@gnu.org and tell them a little about yourself and your background to see if you could be a fit for becoming a co-maintainer.

MetaExchange: The GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities is a GNU project used to make working with metadata easier and more meaningful. MetaExcahnge is used to pull metadata from servers, write that metadata to a database, and then present that same metadata in human-readable form. There are several different protocols constructed for retrieving data from a server and the two that MetaExchange is currently using are Z39.50 and OAI-PMH. MetaExchange aims to work with more server protocols in the future, as well as process records in USMARC format. If you would like to co-maintain and your skill set aligns with SQL, C++, and server communication protocols, then send an email to maintainers@gnu.org and let them know about your interest in the GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities project.

PowerGuru:GNU PowerGuru allows a user to interface directly with power generation products that are used for renewable energy. PowerGuru can poll meters and write the data to a database, enables a user to remotely control a device, easy setup for new installations, 100% free software, and also has SNMP support to allow for easier network integration and administration. Currently, PowerGuru supports only devices by Xantrex and Outback Power Systems, but future work for PowerGuru is to increase the number of supported devices and companies. PowerGuru is currently being maintained by Rob Savoye and is looking for a co-maintainer to help with the workload. If you would like to find out more about PowerGuru and how you could become a co-maintainer, email maintainers@gnu.org and let them know your interest in the project. One thing to note would be that PowerGuru is a FSF copyrighted package, so future maintainers must need to keep up and help maintain that copyright in the PowerGuru papers.

XBoard: This GNU project allows users to play chess in every form possible, such as Chinese chess, Japanese chess, Losers Chess, and Capablanca chess. XBoard contains many great features that make it a stand out chess program, such as an engine that will help analyze moves, servers that allow you to connect with friends and play chess, and correspondence chess played through email. Along with co-maintaining, XBoard is looking for help in several different areas: a new project admin is needed, translators to support new languages, testers, GTK developers, and updates to documentation. If you are up to the challenge and would like to assist with helping out or co-maintaining XBoard, email either maintainers@gnu.org or xboard-devel@gnu.org.

Even if you aren’t looking to become a GNU maintainer, all these project do need help with bugs fixes, reporting bugs, testing, writing documentation, and general development. I encourage everyone to email these projects and see what you can do to help. You don’t have to spend hours every week helping, but an hour or two here and there would go along way for each of these projects

]]>1647291Another Behind-the-Scenes Niche Where Open Source is Winninghttps://fossforce.com/2017/08/another-behind-the-scenes-niche-where-open-source-is-winning/
https://fossforce.com/2017/08/another-behind-the-scenes-niche-where-open-source-is-winning/#commentsThu, 17 Aug 2017 04:05:33 +0000http://fossforce.com/?p=1645913Hook one of these BLE babies up with facial recognition technology and we'll be living smack dab in the middle of a Philip K. Dick novel. [...]

Hook one of these BLE babies up with facial recognition technology and we’ll be living smack dab in the middle of a Philip K. Dick novel.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons? Unless you run a retail store, probably not. But if you do run a store (or stores) along with an e-commerce operation, BLE is a hot new thing you are either using already or thinking about using before long.

Why? Because the graffiti is on the wall, and it says, “Sales in physical stores are going down every year, and most retailers aren’t seeing enough online sales gains to take up the slack.” BLE may help stop the retail sales slide or at least slow it down. It’s cheap enough, especially with open source beacons, that it’s certainly worth a try.

How a BLE proximity system works

The simplest use of BLE is to trigger a notice on a smartphone that comes near your store that says something like, “Hey, c’mon in and get a free gift!” Say you’re a fashion retailer with locations in shopping malls. Any time someone with your app installed on their phone comes near one of your stores, they get that message. Since they’re already your customer, which you know because they have downloaded your app, there’s a good chance they’ll come into your store.

The trick is, all the BLE device does is trigger a cellular or wi-fi connection with your company’s web servers, which display an appropriate page for that location, time of day, and even weather outlook. This keeps the BLE device tiny and cheap. Nordic Semiconductor, to mention one supplier among many, is getting ready to ship a javascript-programmable “Puck.js” device the size of a coin that runs for months on a watch battery. They say it’s easy to program and/or hack (it’s 100% open source) from a smartphone, and it doesn’t require any wiring or installation. Cost? Around $30.

I said this was one of many, and little BLE devices are proliferating like digital bunnies. Prices are dropping. It is already possible to put one set of beacons near your store’s entrance, and beacons in each department that trigger announcements that tell shoppers you have a new shipment of sportsball shoes for them to look at. Or if they go near your Fiddlethwap department, that Seguendish(tm) Thwaphonglers are 40% off — today only!

Sell, sell sell! That’s what retailing’s all about, right? And if you can get someone into the store to actually try on a piece of clothing, you have a fair chance of making a sale you might not have been able to make through your website — and that Amazon probably couldn’t make through their website, either.

Didn’t Apple already try something like this?

They sure did, back in the late Pleistocene year of 2013. “Location-aware services” was the buzzphrase Apple hoped would be on everybody’s lips in a New Jersey minute, but didn’t get much traction outside of Apple’s own stores.

Wait a minute. Did somebody say “proprietary?” Yes, the iBeacon setup was both proprietary and Apple-priced, so thin-margin retailers treated it as a trade show curiosity, not as something to actually use in their stores.

In 2015, Google came out with an open-source Bluetooth beacon protocol they called Eddystone after a famous lighthouse. I mentioned the Nordic Semiconductor initial (anticipated) beacon price of $30. You can get Eddystone beacons for around $10 with a little shopping. The Nordic ones are totally packaged; duct-tape them to the ceiling, whatever. Worth the extra? Probably for some. not for others.

Beacon software? There’s so much of it out there — talking open source, of course — that we might as well just link to this Q&A on Stack Overflow that lists a whole stack of BLE stuff.

And another detail: Apple’s iBeacon worked only with iOS, while Eddystone works with Android, of course, and with iOS, too.

BLE services are coming to an everywhere near you

Right now, most installed BLE beacon systems only work with a retailer’s phone app, but this is changing rapidly. Google is touting Nearby Notifications, which works with Android 4.4 or newer, and recent iOS releases, even without a special app on the customer’s phone. Indeed, one thing it can do is suggest that the customer download the store’s app, which (if the apps I tested while learning about BLE are any example) can also hook the customer up with the company’s online sales arm. Omnichannel retailing! Yes, it’s another buzzphrase, and one that’s becoming popular in the business world in 2017, since all retailers now seem to be selling across multiple channels, which is darn convenient even if all it means to many of us (like me) is ordering a door online from Home Depot so they have it at the front of the store when I go to get it.

(An aside: Walmart hasn’t figured out the front-of-the-store pickup thing yet. Unlike Home Depot — and BestBuy, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a lot of other omnichannel retailers — they make you go all the way to the back of the store to pick up online orders. Grrr….)

An opportunity for IT entrepreneurs

Making the beacon hardware is a job for Giant China Industries, and running a rack of BLEs doesn’t take much software you can’t find on GitHub or other open source software sites. But the units do have to be placed in the stores, they have to have the right greetings installed, and they need to be checked periodically and have their batteries replaced sooner or later.

If you are in (or would like to be in) the IT service business, this is work you may be able to get. Chances of you landing the Macy’s account are slim, but local and regional retailers? Still pretty much a wide-open market. Go for it!